Sokratis Papastathopoulos’ father, Charalambos, revealed all the details of his son’s move from Borussia Dortmund to Arsenal on Monday, whilst speaking on Greek radio.

Charalambos spoke on Radio 24/7 88.6 in his home country, and gave them the inside scoop on Sokratis’ situation as it stands currently.

“He is happy, he is in England at the moment, and tomorrow (Tuesday) he will [sign the contract],” his father said. “He is happy he is moving, I think he is going to a higher level. The world’s most competitive league and I believe it will go well.

“[The contract] is for three years plus one. Arsenal had talked to him two years ago, but I do not know why the transfer did not work then. The teams did not find agreement, probably.”

Interestingly, Charalambos also revealed that another top Premier League club was after Sokratis: Manchester United. However, they wanted the defender to wait for them until July, and he chose Arsenal instead.

“There was interest from United, but for July, he had to wait until July for United,” he explained. “United had a very good relationship with Dortmund, the teams talked the most, but Sokratis chose to go to Arsenal.”

It’s hard to know why United wanted the player to wait until later. Perhaps they wanted to keep him as a plan B in case they missed out on another target. Maybe they knew Arsenal were after him and just wanted to disrupt the Gunners’ plans. Whatever the case may be, thankfully it seems Sokratis was having none of it.

Hopefully now Arsenal and the 29-year-old will finalise the move, and announce it in the coming days. It’s always a bit frustrating for fans to see these deals drag on, especially since there’s much greater potential for something to go wrong when they do.

We saw that last summer, when Arsenal spent the whole window pursuing Thomas Lemar, but only made a serious bid on deadline day. It’d be nice not to experience that again this summer.